Tactical resistances in daily politics: how do battered Vietnamese wives negotiate family and state tightropes in

WithTaiwan?

Introduction
Existing literature on Vietnamese migrant wives in Taiwan has focused primarily
on structural conditions that determine the experiences of immigrant wives in
contemporary Taiwanese society (e.g. Hsia 2001). Within this line of reasoning,
research has tended to overstate structural constraints and has therefore overlooked the significance of agency of migrant wives, who are often portrayed as
docile or victimized rather than as individuals who negotiate and appropriate their
limited resources to improve their marginalized positions.